American Attitudes on Health Care and Privacy

Abstract

Issues of health care, technology, and privacy have been one focus of my research, writing, and advocacy for over forty years. I was asked to appear today to discuss current public attitudes toward health care and privacy, especially in the context of information technology applications and programs to develop a national Electronic Medical Record (EMR) system. I am convinced that how the public sees the privacy risks and responding actions in any EMR system will be absolutely critical to this program’s success – or will be a major factor in its failure. To address these issues, and to assist the Advisory Committee and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), my Program collaborated with Harris Interactive to place a set of exploratory questions on a representative national survey by telephone that Harris Interactive conducted in February, 2005. The top line results and my analysis of their implications are being publicly released at this hearing, and will also be published in The Harris Poll. Our telephone survey had 1,012 respondents. The national sample was weighted to be demographically representative of the public 18 years of age or older. This represents approximately 214 million adults. The sampling error is plus or minus 3%.